Terms Of A Lover
by JustOpposed Silbi
Summary: [ONESHOT] A sequel to 'To My Downfall'. It's just a matter of redrawing the lines. Careful with blood and understanding. [KakaSaku]


**Disclaimer:** Don't own Naruto.

**Warning:** Blood and happy ending. There should be a warning for that.

**Author's Note:** A sequel to 'To My Downfall', for those who requested them ;) Thanks for reading. Comments and critics are highly appreciated, too.

* * *

**TERMS OF A LOVER**

**By Silbi**

She enters his bedroom warily, already sensing the emptiness it exudes. She lets her eyes make sure for themselves, trailing past the half-made bed and various articles on its headboard. No signs of him being there just recently.

She pauses at a dust-framed photograph, apart and stands out from the other miscellanies. She forgot that it has always been there, watching time elapses into nothingness, her relationship evolving a step further.

As if drawn by it she approaches his bed, though she refuses to make the bed hers before he is there and make it theirs as promised. Her fingers float over the picture as though unwanting to disturb its muted happiness.

Team Seven, complete and unscathed. A smile graces her feature in the shadows of his bedroom. She finally lays her fingers on the frame and brings it closer, and behind it is an alarm clock. Dead.

Her smile widens. To find that Hatake Kakashi put them before time is endearing to say the least - there wasn't solid proof on that fact before, but now when she has the time, she can finally look into him and discover it - though mostly his lateness is intolerable.

Usually they are both too tired, too oblivious to care for things other than themselves, given the five-hour space. They convinced themselves that other things could wait.

She almost drops the photograph when a clatter startles her. She quickly replaces it and rushes to the window.

The silver-haired jounin jumps in, and though taken aback, her reflexes throws her body aside just in time. He lands behind her heavily.

"Kakashi," she starts, her voice warning.

He slumps forward before he can reach his bed, and again her speed saves her and him also, but her strength hasn't helped much. He weighs like a ton of bricks being a lanky ninja who barely looks after what he eats. Past half the year it has been her on-and-off task and she didn't think he has changed that.

Her irritation turns into concern as his body weighs them down to their knees. "Kakashi, you alright?"

He gestures with his eye to his vest, and she puts some distance between them to have a look - and has to gasp at the sight. A deep gash divides his chest horizontally from his left shoulder to over his right hipbone, tearing through his vest and his dark shirt, red seeping through the caked blood on the torn ends. It's been bleeding for quite some time, she realizes. Well, no time to be a damsel in distress.

She concentrates on collecting her healing chakra, her brows furrowing as she feels the familiar warmth in her and directs it to her palms.

Kakashi grasps her hand mid-air before it makes contact with his wound. "Not... now," he wheezes, and it hurts to see him hurt by merely speaking, "just help me... change... my clothes."

She puts on her most patronizing look and wiggles free from his hold. "After I do something with this," she says, pushing her palms against the bloodied gash, and her lightest effort makes him groan in pain. "Say something about changing clothes again and I'll spank you for good."

Under normal circumstances she'd be grinning foxily and he wouldn't complain, but that's a totally different matter.

Her hands guide him to the floor, he closes his eyes and she finishes her task.

* * *

It takes her two hours in total to heal him completely - the deep gash on the chest, crisscrosses on his arms and legs, then there's the light concussion that sucks up the remaining of her chakra. She can finally help him to the bed, him muttering something like she shouldn't have done it and mumbling something about three hours left and as he lays on the mend she falls like a stump on his side.

God, how time binds them like dolls on strings.

* * *

Ten past two. He gets this light-headed feeling at the sight of those two pointing arrows, at the sight of her smiling, also at blood loss. Kakashi regards his position in the middle of the bed, dead clock at the back of his head, and his current state, wondering which is affecting which.

The slightly woozy jounin gets off the bed slowly not to wake his companion, toddling off to the far corner of his room that serves as his kitchen past a coffee table.

He knocks his knee on the low piece of furniture, it creaks aloud, he curses aloud and falls, and she stirs awake, and he curses again.

"Hmm?" she mumbles, rousing from sleep. No matter how grown-up she is there are things her curvaceous body and stunning eyes can't erase, pink hair mussed and face pillow-kissed, the moonlight creating some sort of alien glow on her outlines and strawberry locks. They are her adolescent, post-sleep look, and their generation gap.

She blinks owlishly, then focuses on his hunched form on the floor, saying "What'rre you doin' down there, Kakashi?", the sleepy slur evident.

"I just need some water," he feigns a sheepish look.

"Bullshit," she states matter-of-factly. He quits feigning innocence.

She knew. She knew that it is no more than five minutes past the five-hour, that he wants to run away from it, from coming to terms with the news that their relationships has gone past friend with benefits, as much as she wants to herself.

He cringes, the throbbing pain on his knee, the dizzying effect of epiphany, and her understanding are just too much for his recovering brain.

His former student, his ever friend, his daily caretaker, grins and beckons at him. "C'mere, old man."

There were terms to describe Sakura, but nothing fits her well enough as his lover-to-be.


End file.
